In my family, as in most primitive tribes, we tend to remember our holidays by key events that occurred around them, as opposed to by the year. There was the Christmas that my diminutive Aunt Tinie nearly tripped and killed herself because the kimono my grandmother had given her was three sizes too big (“68-year-old women do not grow into clothes, dammit!”). My two grown daughters nearly lose control over the mere mention of the time that the Christmas tree I had attached rolled off the roof of the family station wagon and into oncoming traffic. And who could forget the holiday my mother tried to defrost a 16-pound turkey in just two hours? We still refer to that as “Val’s Tavern Pizza Thanksgiving.” Since we only had turkey once a year, we tended to forget how to prepare the entrée. Amazingly, turkeys didn’t come with directions back in the 70s; growers just assumed you knew what to do. My mom sure could have used a friendly voice to help save our “take-out Thanksgiving.”
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the brand that has become the Cadillac of turkeys — Butterball. Let’s defuse one myth right up front: there’s no butter in a Butterball Turkey and there never has been. The name derives from the strain of turkey that founder Frank Swift developed as the brand standard, bred for its broad breast and plump round shape. The Butterball brand, now owned by ConAgra, ranks as the national sales leader in the turkey category, and is expanding rapidly into other SKUs of turkey and chicken products. Turkey has benefited tremendously lately from recognition of the product’s low fat/high protein nutritional benefits. As a result, U.S. consumption in the category has risen 220% since 1970, to 17.4 lbs. per capita in 2004 (according to Butterball).
But Thanksgiving is when this bird rules the roost. According to the National Turkey Federation, an astounding 97% of us eat turkey at Thanksgiving, consuming 46 million of the birds in the process.
In 1981, some thoughtful soul at Edelman, ConAgra’s p.r. agency, got the notion that consumers might appreciate having a toll-free telephone number they could call around the holidays to ask any turkey questions they might have. Edelman duly hired six home economists and stationed them in the Butterball test kitchens during the Thanksgiving holiday period with a bank of phones. The agency wasn’t sure anyone would call, but in fact 11,000 consumers dialed 1-800-Butterball, and one of marketing’s greatest one-to-one consumer relationships was born.
“We don’t call it a hotline,” says Mary Clingman, who is the director of the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line and has served on the line for 20 years. “When people call us, they need help, so we make every effort to talk to them just like we would a neighbor.” The Talk-Line has 50 operators every year, each with at least a Bachelors degree in Dietetics or Home Economics; 45% have a Masters degree.
The downside of the operator’s job is that, since three-quarters of all calls come either before Thanksgiving, or on the day, he or she must be able to work all day on the holiday. The line gets hundreds of calls in early November, then builds to more than 10,000 calls on the holiday itself, and over 200,000 during the holiday season.
Unlike almost all other inbound call centers, the operators on the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line aren’t rated on call volume handled; their sole job is to answer whatever question the caller has — no matter how long it takes.
“Would I spend an hour on one call if that’s what it takes?” Clingman asks. “Absolutely. We’re solving problems that impact whole families’ holiday dinners. We give whatever time we need to answer their questions.”
With that kind of customer commitment on top of enormous call volume, you’d expect some pretty horrendous phone queues. The folks at Butterball hate the thought of customers having to suffer interminable waits, and live in horror of anyone receiving a busy signal. To prevent this, they instituted a phone shunt with pre-recorded answers to frequently asked questions in six categories. This option answers all calls immediately and offers consumers a quick way to get answers to their questions. Callers can learn about thawing, cooking, and more without having to wait for an operator.
This system has been aided by the inception of butterball.com in 1995. The Web site has more choices of pre-scripted answers than on the Talk-Line, but customer can still obtain answers to their own specific questions in close to real time, if they still need one-on-one contact. ConAgra has gone so far as to add Spanish-speaking perators to the Talk-Line in this, the line’s 24th year.
For the record, the most frequently asked question is, “How long does it take to defrost a turkey?” The answer: one day in the refrigerator for every four pounds of turkey. In fact, thawing most large turkeys up to a week in the refrigerator is just fine. Other commonly asked questions revolve around food safety. In rare instances, a Talk-Line operator may be unable to save the day, in which case she has to pronounce the dreaded death sentence: “If it were me, I wouldn’t serve that turkey.”
Operators on the Talk-Line receive extensive training each year. ConAgra has established Butterball University for the yearly training of its Talk-Line operators. Even though the average operator has 10 years of experience, each must spend a day at the “U” in training. Freshman operators must spend two days training, learning how to cook turkeys in a variety of different ways. Deep-fat fried turkeys have expanded dramatically from a technique exclusive to the state of Louisiana to a nationwide craze according to Clingman, who adds that grilling the traditional Thanksgiving bird is the newest culinary wave.
As if all this weren’t enough, Clingman and her staff comb the leading women’s magazines prior to Thanksgiving to note which turkey recipes are being featured in them, “We know if there’s a recipe that doesn’t explain things correctly we’ll be getting calls on it, so several of us will learn at home how to prepare the recipe in question correctly so that we can explain to our callers how to get it right.” Trust me when I tell you that these guys are good, very good.
When the big day hits, it’s all hands on deck; according to Clingman, everyone on the Talk-Line puts in a full shift on Thanksgiving. “You feel guilty taking a break during the day, so most of us work right through.” What do operators dine on while talking turkey with America? Soup. “We’ve found that soup in our kind of environment is soothing, so we always have three kinds on hand: turkey, cheese and some sort of potato soup,” she adds.
So what does Clingman serve on Thanksgiving Day at her home? Does she grill, deep-fat fry, bake in a tandoor clay oven? “I’m always working all that day, so my husband has to cook the turkey for our family. He just follows the directions that come on every Butterball turkey and it turns out great every time.”
Rod Taylor is senior VP of promotions for CoActive Marketing in Cincinnati, OH. Send feedback to rtaylor@getcoactive.com.
Turkeys Are Funny Birds
In her 20 years on the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line you would expect Mary Clingman would have heard it all. Here are some of her favorites:
“One woman called in because her father thought she was wrong to defrost the turkey in the sink with the dish mat on top of the bird and the drain stopper on top of that. She claimed that was the way mom had always done it, so it had to be right. From the background I heard ‘mom’ wail, ‘Honey we had a cat!’”
“We had a woman call us and ask if she had to remove the drumsticks of the turkey to cook it correctly. She just didn’t seem to believe us when we told her that it was normal to cook turkeys with the drumsticks on, because they’d always removed them in her family ‘for generations.’ She called us back to let us know that she’d discovered that her family had done it that way out of early necessity — ‘my grandmother’s oven was so narrow the turkey wouldn’t fit unless you removed the legs — and we’ve followed that technique like gospel ever since.’”
“One year one of our freshman operators received her very first Talk-Line call from a frantic consumer claiming to have placed their turkey in the pre-heated oven without removing it from its plastic wrapper. ‘Remove the turkey from the oven at once,’ our befuddled rookie immediately blurted into the phone. We’re never sure if those calls aren’t set-ups from folks trying to have a little fun with us.”
“My favorite call came from a woman in Colorado who had placed her turkey outside in a snowbank to keep it frozen. Unfortunately it had snowed in the night and she couldn’t remember where she had put their Butterball. It’s rare, but sometimes there’s nothing even we can do to help.”
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